Mark Hamill Already Met With George Lucas About The Possibility Of More "Star Wars" Movies Last Summer

So much news has been pouring out in the aftermath of Disney buying Lucasfilm, and now Mark Hamill is opening up about what he knows about the new Star Wars trilogy in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. When asked if he knew about the sale, Hamill said:

Oh my gosh, what a shock that was! I had no idea that George was going to sell to Disney until I read it online like everybody else. He did tell us last summer about wanting to go on and do [Episodes] VII, VIII, and IX, and that [newly appointed Lucasfilm president] Kathleen Kennedy would be doing them. He seems to be in a really good place. He’s really happy. And that’s nice because I know that when we were making the movies, he was not a jolly guy on set.

This is the first anyone is hearing of Hamill meeting with Lucas about the possibility of more Star Wars movies. He then elaborated on just what went down:

Yeah, last August, he asked Carrie and I to have lunch with him and we did. I thought he was going to talk about either his retirement or the Star Wars TV series that I’ve heard about — which I don’t think we were going to be involved in anyway, because that takes place between the prequels and the ones we were in and, if Luke were in them, he’d be anywhere from a toddler to a teenager so they’d get an age-appropriate actor — or the 3-D releases. So when he said, “We decided we’re going to do EpisodesVII, VIII, and IX,” I was just gobsmacked. “What? Are you nuts?!” [Laughs] I can see both sides of it. Because in a way, there was a beginning, a middle, and an end and we all lived happily ever after and that’s the way it should be — and it’s great that people have fond memories, if they do have fond memories. But on the other hand, there’s this ravenous desire on the part of the true believers to have more and more and more material.

Hamill went on to say that Lucas told both of them so they wouldn’t hear if from someone else first. He didn’t say whether he or Fisher would actually return to the series, but a recent report doesn’t rule out the possibility of more Luke Skywalker on the screen, at least. We’ll have more information on what is slowly becoming one of the bigger entertainment stories in months.